compiled by JULIE POUCHER HARBIN, EDITOR, ISLAMiCommentary, on APRIL 6, 2014:
photo: Flickr
Indians start voting in the world’s biggest ever election on Monday, April 7, with Hindu hardliner Narendra Modi, a frontrunner for premier who has promised to revive the economy. AFP reports that Modi “accused India’s ruling Congress party on the eve of the vote on Sunday of failing Muslims as his own party battled claims of fueling religious tensions and his rival Rahul Gandhi warned that the country faced religious turmoil if Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won.” At stake — the Muslim vote could decide at least 100 seats in India’s parliament.
Here is a compilation of analyses from today’s headlines:
Muslim Population in India: Infograph (OnIslam.net, April 4, 2014) CAIRO – Making about 140 million Muslims in Hindu-majority country, India Muslims have been the cornerstone of the Indian elections for decades. As voting gets underway in the biggest-ever democratic process next Monday, Muslims are being wooed since their votes would decide at least 100 seats. India’s Muslim population is the world’s third largest, after Indonesia and Pakistan, and the world’s largest Muslim-minority population. FULL ARTICLE AND MAP
BJP Victory to Fuel Violence: India Muslims (OnIslam.net, April 6, 2014) CAIRO – As elections train takes off tomorrow in India, Muslims who were forced to flee Hindu communal violence in Muzaffarnagar are warning that an election victory for Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi will bring more violence of the kind which devastated their district. FULL ARTICLE
Congress (party) looks to Muslims for survival in Uttar Pradesh (by Piyush Srivastava, India Today, April 4, 2014) United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s April 1 meeting with the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid is but the final leg of the Congress party’s Muslim vote strategy. With 16 Lok Sabha constituencies that have a Muslim population of between 20 and 50 per cent, Uttar Pradesh is the centerpiece of what is beginning to look like a survival plan now. FULL ARTICLE
Muslims in Post-1947 India: The socio-economic condition of Muslims and communal conflict have both exacerbated rather than resolved with the partition (by Ali Usman Qasmi, The News on Sunday (Pakistan), April 6, 2014) (Ali Usman Qasmi is Assistant Professor History at LUMS in Pakistan.) The term Indian Muslim seems to be a misnomer. From Prof. Mohammad Mujeeb, former vice chancellor Jamia Millia to Ayesha Jalal, several scholars have underscored internal fissures along class, ethnic, linguistic and sectarian lines to describe the nature of quite a fragmented imaginary of ‘the Muslim community’ in South Asia. Same was true during the colonial time and it holds even now.
Thus, in order to make better sense of the plight of Muslims in India, academics have started paying attention to the lived experiences of Muslims in different parts of India in particular settings. Christophe Jafferlot and Laurent Gayer’s recently published edited volume on the Muslims living in Indian cities is one illustration of that trend. Similarly, Nida Kirmani’s excellent book focuses on a particular area/locality in Delhi primarily inhabited by the Muslims that serves as a sample which then helps us to reflect on broader questions of Muslim identity, citizenship, security and gender issues among other themes. FULL ARTICLE